Oculus Quest gets app sharing and multi-user support with a Facebook catch

Oculus Quest is getting two useful features today, particularly for instances where there are multiple people in a household using a single headset. Oculus has rolled out multi-user accounts and app sharing – two somewhat self-explanatory features that nonetheless make it easier to ensure that everyone using a headset not only has their own account, but also their own progression in games and their own privacy settings.

According to a blog post on the Oculus website, the admin account on a headset can add up to three additional accounts to that device, and all of those accounts can participate in app sharing. That, of course, means that when you purchase an app once, it's available for all the other accounts on a headset to play, complete with individual progression and achievements for each account. Users will also have their own friends lists, browser history, and privacy settings, with Oculus saying that each account can even be locked with patterns.

There are, obviously, some rules and restrictions that come with this, and unfortunately, you won't be able to get around the Facebook account requirement by using multi-user accounts – the administrator account and each user account need to be linked to individual Facebook accounts. App sharing is only available on the device that the admin account is registered too, so those who wind up purchasing their own headset won't be able to access the admin's apps on that device.

Additionally, if any account holders other than the admin purchase apps or games, those won't be eligible for app sharing. It also seems that app sharing won't necessarily be available in all apps – Oculus says that all apps published to the Oculus Quest Store from today on will, but there are a "limited number" of existing games that don't support the feature yet.

These are also considered experimental features by Oculus, so some aspects of them (such as the number of users permitted on a headset) could change as time goes on. For now, they're only rolling out to Oculus Quest 2 users, but we'll see them head to all Quest users before long.